Formal training? I have none.. hobbyist I guess.. but I believe I know a little more then some professionals.

I mean, if you're not passionate about your work as a hobby..

I think you do know quite a bit more than most professionals I met.

I personally classify myself as a hobbyist who got sick and tired of IT professionals trying to boss me around and whom I had to beg every time I needed to complete some work. So one day I decided that investing couple months in intensive learning was worthy of avoiding that crap. I did it and now I am a happy camper. I do not need any IT departments any more to do my work. I do not need any IT service personal. Only people whom I really need are OpenBSD developers who are codding OS for me.
I wonder what would happen if they piss me off I would probably have to brash up my C programing language skills, shut up, and do some hacking of my own.

How about "neither?" Yes, I use computers professionally, and do all my (small) company's IT. But they are not my focus, nor have I really been trained formally for anything I do now. And I certainly don't get paid for the IT support -- it just sucks time from other, more important, things.

Almost the reverse in my case: started as a career in the mid/late 90s ("I can make money working in computers, right?") and became both a career and a regular hobby.

Oh I remember the late nineties. That was when the dot-com bubble was at its peak and everyone (and I mean "everyone") wanted to get into the dot-com/computers thing. Back then I was pretty much clueless in life so I figured going for CS ought to be safe bet but as soon as I joined college the .com bubble burst. :P

I figured going for CS ought to be safe bet but as soon as I joined college the .com bubble burst. :P

Just as I graduated it burst. I got really lucky in landing a job in central Texas. ("Plan B" was a US Navy or US Air Force officer career; I was already talking with recruiters when I finally got a CS job.)

I still remember reading promotional material at the hotel I was staying at, while I was looking for an apartment. The mayor of Austin at the time was quoted saying something along the lines of: "Dotcoms are as plentiful as bluebonnets here."

I consider myself a hobbyist as far as this poll is concerned, but would very much like to work with computers in what you would deem a "professional" capacity. For me, a job is what you do to pay bills, but a career is what you do because you want to do it, and getting paid in the process, is icing on the cake.

I've been using computers since I was a very small child, and gradually grew to love tinkering with them in the 2000s. The only education I have had, is a church pastor who explained something about scrollbars to me shortly after the change from MS-DOS to Windows 98; everything else I've generally learned because I wanted to learn it. What most people call "Computer Science"; how networks work; how systems are engineered; mathematics that makes me think. why is that?; how OS kernels work; how this line of code goes from bytes of key presses on a keyboard, to machine code; the physics that work in the world around me; what makes the lightbulb in the fridge turn on... all fascinate me, there are so many things in those realms that I appreciate. I gneerally write myself off as a geek, nothing more.

Quote:

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

I study what I love, I write code because of a passion for working with it; I learned how to use Unix like systems, because I fell in love with the design of it; TCP/IP Networks were always a mystery, what in the universe is this modem setup-thing driving at with these questions? Had to find and go exploring afterwards, rather then just do as I was told by the ISP; got a computer that I could screw with, so no one could complain if I broke it... took her apart, put her back together again, and learned as much as I could in the process about what made her tick (the box ran perfectly, as soon as I remembered to plug the keyboard back in xD).

It is a possibility that I may never have my cake and get to eat it too, but I sure as f*** will eat it!

If I wasn't self driven to learn this stuff, and didn't enjoy working with it for such large parts of my daily life -> I could never fathom seeking a carreer based on computers. Instead I would start building my body for the PT, and probably head towards the Police Department or the United States military, depending on just what I could live with at the end of my days... but I would very much like to work in computing, eventually.

If anyone is a Battletech fan, think of a mercenary companies techs joy at salvaging good equipment -> You'll see the smile on my face at finding PC parts or new tools to play with lol. Some people are full of music, others might be found writing books, me? In front of a computer or out trying to understand why it works.

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Originally Posted by DrJ

And there is not much time left simply to play with computers.

I don't know about for you DrJ, but to me... I would call that a tragedy :\.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oko

Only people whom I really need are OpenBSD developers who are codding OS for me. I wonder what would happen if they piss me off I would probably have to brash up my C programing language skills, shut up, and do some hacking of my own.

I don't know about for you DrJ, but to me... I would call that a tragedy :\.

Maybe. Things I'm doing for "fun" right now are, for example, refereeing articles for sexy journals like Lab-on-a-Chip, Langmuir and Journal of Chromatography. Yes, they are related to what I do professionally, but there is no money in it. At all. But there is some really cool technology in the world beyond computers.